Send up a kite with the Nokia N900 and Brightkite

A few days ago I wrote a post about Foursquare, but Foursquare is far from the only location based social network service that you can use on the Nokia N900. When checking into Foursquare you are limited to public venues (I know that some people are adding their homes but that is not the purpose of Foursquare). With Brightkite on the other hand you have the opportunity to check-in at any address so that you can tell your friends that you are at home or visiting your grandmother. Brightkite gives you the opportunity to send your check-ins to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Fire Eagle. Because Brightkite does not have the game element of badges that Foursquare has it is not as fun to use therefore I find that using Foursquare and Brightkite together is the best way to use these services, checking in with Foursquare when I'm at a public venue and checking in with Brightkite when I'm at a private location. As far as I know Foursquare are working on some way to allow people to add private venues to the service but until then I'll be using both services.
Since there is no Brightkite app for the N900 there are two ways to use Brightkite on the N900 the first is through the Brightkite mobile website and the other one is through the normal Brightkite website, since the normal website works perfect on the N900 that is what I'm using.

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Tell the world where you are and earn badges with Nokia N900 and Foursquare

The last week or so I've really become addicted to Foursquare. I think that with more and more people carrying around smartphones, sharing you location is gonna be huge, and I think Foursquare is a great example of how location sharing can be done. I've in another post written a bit about Google Latitude, but for me Google Latitude has not done the trick, because even after a great deal of convincing, I have not succeeded in getting any of my friends to use it, and since Google Latitude cannot be connected to either Twitter or Facebook it is essential that you friends use it as well. Foursquare is different, of cause it is more fun to use if your friends use it too, but since it has great integration with Facebook it can still be meaningful to use, even if your friends doesn't. With Foursquare you check-in to venues through the Foursquare mobile website. The venues has either already been added or you can add them through the Foursquare website. When you check-in at the venues you earn badges, and so far I have earned the Newbie badge, that you get for your first check-in, and I have earned the Local badge, that you get for checking in at the same place three times in the same week. You can also get to be the mayor of a venue if you are the one with the most check-ins at a venue (atm. I'm the mayor at three different venues.).
Foursquare has dedicated apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, users of the Nokia N900 are stuck with the mobile website that looks far from great in the fantastic MicroB browser. But the mobile website is usable and since the only thing you need it for is checking in it is alright.
But we will not be left out for long... BarrioSquare is coming... BarrioSquare is a Foursquare client for the N900 developed by Chris B and is as far as I know in private beta atm.

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Nokia N900 as your cookbook with Pyrecipe

Yesterday I had made vegetarian Swedish Sausage dish (Svensk Pølseret) with my Nokia N900 acting as my cookbook and my shopping list using Pyrecipe.
Pyrecipe is a great way to organize your recipes on the N900, with the option to both import and export recipes it is easy to build op a great database with all your favorite recipes.
With the build-in shopping list its easy to make a shopping list from the ingredient list and check-off the ingredient when you have put it in your basket.
Swedish Sausage dish is not usually a vegetarian dish and I haven't had it since I went vegetarian 7 or 8 years ago, but since the only meat in the dish is the sausages it is easily converted to vegetarian by choosing vegetarian sausages instead I bought Anamma Sausages at Helsehjørnet in Aalborg.

If anyone is interested in the recipe it can be downloaded here (Gourmet XML) here (KRecipies) or here (HTML) (The recipe is in Danish)

Blogging from the Nokia N900 with MaStory

I usually use my laptop when I'm blogging but for this post and the one before this I've been experimenting with using MaStory. MaStory has some really great features among them are great integration with Blogger, Wordpress, Livejournal, Drupal, Pixelpipe, Flickr and Picasa. But also support for a lot of HTML code and very advanced posting options. The only thing that I personally miss from MaStory is spell- and grammar-check.
MaStory for me means that I can work on my blog posts whereever I am, and I do not need my laptop for blogging anymore - that's a great freedom.
One problem that I have found though is that when I add pictures straight from MaStory they are way too big for my layout here on blogger.

Genealogy on the Nokia N900 with geni.com

For some years now I've been interested in genealogy, first I used different offline solutions on my PC for building my family tree, but in the start of 2007 geni.com went into public beta and since then I've used geni.com. Today I'm connected to nearly 35.000.000 profiles with more than 100.000 blood relatives on the tree. With the help of geni.com I now know how I'm related to the Margaret the 2nd of Denmark and I can follow my bloodline back to Yngvi Hálfdanarson born in the year 20. Geni.com is in my opinion a fantastic tool for building family trees because it combines pure genealogy with social networking because you can invite your family to participate in building your family tree. The reason why I mention all of this if because of the fantastic browser MicroB on the Nokia N900 the full flash support in the browser makes it a perfect toll for using geni.com on the go. So far I have not found a single thing I cannot do on geni.com with my N900, I can even navigate the tree.
All this means that I can now do genealogy while I'm on the train, waiting for the bus or even laying in my bed.

Enjoy podcasts on the Nokia N900 with gPodder

Another app that I use a lot on my N900 is gPodder. gPodder is a podcast application with many features most importantly u can stream or download podcasts. I have yet to explore all the features of the app especially in connection with the many ways you can add podcasts and that is because so far all the podcasts that I’ve added has been video podcasts which had URL feeds. Because of that the only thing I had to do after I installed the gPodder was to copy the URL for feed into the app by choosing “Add new podcast” and then select “Podcast feed/website URL”. That’s all.
The Podcasts I’ve added are mostly Danish podcast and I can very much recommend these Podcasts:

Danskerne Akademi:
http://vpodcast.dr.dk/feeds/akademirss.xml (Danish)
DR2 Udland:
http://vpodcast.dr.dk/feeds/DR2_udlandrss.xml (Danish)
Smagsdommerne:
http://vpodcast.dr.dk/feeds/smagsdommernerss.xml (Danish)
So ein Ding:
http://vpodcast.dr.dk/feeds/soeindingrss.xml (Danish)
Spise med Price:
http://vpodcast.dr.dk/feeds/spisemedpricerss.xml (Danish)
Troldspejlet:
http://vpodcast.dr.dk/feeds/troldspejletrss.xml (Danish)
GeekBrief.tv:
http://www.podshow.com/feeds/geekbrief.xml (English)

All the video podcasts from Danmarks Radio can be found here: http://www.dr.dk/Podcast/video.htm

MMS on the N900

I finally got MMS to work on my N900 the last couple of days I’ve managed to both send a MMS and receive one.

To do so I needed to apps: fAPN and fMMS. fAPN is used to make a new APN and fMMS is the actual MMS client.
As I’m in Denmark and my N900 uses Telias network I had to find the right MMS parameters for Telia Denmark, and fortunately the Maemo community has made that pretty easy as there is a list with all the know MMS parameters listed by country and provider here.

After I had found the right parameters and installed the two apps I opened fAPN and added the APN Telia MMS, then closed the program and went to internet connections in the settings menu. There I chose connections, Telia MMS and Edit. I then had to push next and put in www.mms.mtelia.dk as name of access point, then next and then advanced. In advanced I had to put 193.209.134.131 as HTTP-Proxy and 8080 as port number and then hit save.
With the APN now configured I then went to fMMS and configured the app I chose Telia MMS as the APN, http://mms.telia.dk as the MMSC, put in 300 as the value for “Resize image width” and then my phone number including country code.
And that was it… Now I can send and receive MMS on my N900.

Another great game for the N900: SuperTux

Those of you who played Super Mario Bros. on the NES will feel right at home in this game. SuperTux is basically the same as Super Mario Bros. but instead of the Italian plumber brothers the main character is the penguin Tux. So far I've played through the first 4 stages and I really like it the control is easy and the stages are perfect length for wasting a few minutes. SuperTux is cross platform but I think it's perfect for the N900.

I had a few problems with the game though. Because of my Scandinavian version of the N900 I had to setup the keys a bit different. But when using "wasd" as directional keys and "space" as jump and "m" as power/run everything works perfect.